Thoughts, Rants and Subliminal Suggestions

In Australia!!

Well then, here I am in Australia! Today is May20, time is 3:30 pm, not 1:30 am like the post says, due to the wonderful time change. Jet lag is crazy and I think I have finally recovered and this is the third day I've been here! Our group from Florida Tech is pretty cool. I have a feeling that there will be some issues that come to a breaking point later in the trip but right now we're content to ignore and live and let live. I'll touch on those in a bit. There are a total of 23 people all travelling together and this includes 15 girls, Matt Scripter our TA/GSA, Dr. Shenker and his wife Sandy and 5 guys.
We all met at the Los Angeles airport on Monday May 16 and waited in the airport for what seemed like a god-awful long time then took the 11:50 pm flight to Sydney. The flight lasted 13 hours and 55 minutes and it was SOOOOO long. Luckily there were movies continually playing and the seats were fairly decent for sleeping, unlike the planes that I normally fly in from CT to FL. Thank goodness. We arrived at Sydney at 7 am on May 18. May 17 never existed for me. We took abus to our hostel in Sydney, called Footprints Westend. It's really awesome!! After getting all of our luggage up to our rooms we were forced out and walked to the Sydney Aquarium. 23 Marine Biology majors in an aquarium is a really funny site and I thought pretty dangerous to do. After that, we walked to the Sydney Fish market for lunch/early dinner. All of the fish for sale was amazing. Afterwards, I chose to go shopping with Sandy and a couple other girls and we went Opal shopping. Australia has many opal mines so you can get jewelry for fairly low cost compared to the states. Additionally, the quality of the stones is far better and you can find black opals, not just the white ones in the states. I bought myself a ring, it is absolutely gorgeous. We came back to the hostel and crashed. I was asleep by 6 pm.
Our room woke up by 3:30 am, which really stunk. Stupid jetlag. I managed to fall back asleep and woke again at 7 am. We went out to breakfast at this awesome little cafe. It had awesome food. We then took a walk through Hyde Park, to the Botanical Gardens, through the Gardens and on to the Opera House. Hyde Park was really pretty. The Botanical Gardens were very cool. There were TONS of Flying Foxes, a type of fruit bat, nesting in the trees. There were also some very cool Golden Orb spiders everywhere. Oh yeah, and plants :-) We even saw a Kookaburra! We walked around the outside of the opera house then took a ferry over to the Taronga Zoo. Supposedly Steve Irwin's crocodiles lived there while he was renovating his own zoo thing. The entire zoo was on a hillside and you could take a ski lift to the top then just walk down the hill and see all the animals. There was a baby wombat that was SOOOOO cute! I even got my picture taken with some Koalas, up close! I'll have pictures to share when I get back. We took the ferry back across Sydney Harbour then walked back to the hostel through Hyde Park again which was beautiful at night. The Eucalyptus trees form a natural cathedral ceiling above you as you walk down the main path and the tree trunks are lit with lights. It was amazing. Brenda, Dana and I then went out to find a movie theatre because Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith opened today! Hah!! We saw it before the states!!! Except for midnight showings. Either way, we watched it. Movies are way more expensive here then in the states even with the exchange rate. Got back to the hostel around midnight and went to sleep. Dana and I decided that Padme was a goody-two shoes and didn't deserve Anakin and we wouldn't mind be seduced by a guy heading for the Dark side, especially one as good looking as Hayden Christenson.
This morning I went to the same cafe for breakfast then headed back to the room and waited for Dana to get ready to leave. We went to Paddy's Market which was so cool! There was a whole bunch of stuff, tourist traps for sure but some of it was neat. I got an awesome massage. I realized that I have several people I need to buy stuff for to bring back but I really shouldn't get it now seeing as though I still have 5 1/2 weeks left. They are as follows: Mom, Scott, Eric, Eric's sister and my cousin Laura. All of the stuff in the market though was cheapy and not good.
Well, that's been my trip so far. I have 5 minutes left on the computer. Got to go!!!

posted by Amy M @ 1:28 AM